On January 28, 2016, the word “beautiful” was practically redefined. I think back ten years ago, to 8- year-old me, a little girl infatuated with creating an imaginary world. Mattel’s Barbie dolls were the essence of my make- believe tales. Who I could become, the image I aspired to replicate, and drive for perfection, all rested within this tiny, plastic doll.
Fast- forward to 2016. Here we are, just days after Barbie announced their revolutionized line of new Fashionistas. The little girl who lived in the make- believe world of Barbie ten years ago has overcome the negative stigma behind the perfect skinny doll. But today, the doll empowers girls around the world to grow up with the impression that they can do and be anything and everything they want. The plastic doll now represents diversity and exposes a much broader outlook on beauty, allowing future generations to flourish rather than be withered down to believing they need to be perfect. Flaws are coined beautiful in this day and age, contributing to what make us original and unique.
The campaign behind transforming Barbie has been an ongoing effort, one that has caught my eye since the very beginning. I remember in early 2014 when Mattel launched their campaign called #Unapologetic, an effort to prove that Barbie too, along with all girls, should not apologize for how she looks. I was able to speak with someone behind the thinking of that campaign and was instantly drawn to it. The ideas behind it were transforming – nobody ever thought about how Barbie herself would react to the stigmas against her. The #Unapologetic campaign has evolved as Mattel continued to reinvent the brand – including one of my favorites, “Imagine the Possibilities.”
There was an article in Time magazine last year by Charlotte Alter. She took all the bad we talk about in Barbie and transformed it into good. She made a statement about how ironic it is that we focus so deeply on her outer appearance and so little on her astounding 150 careers. “She represents beauty and materialism, sure, but she also represents mutability, imagination and professional possibilities. If we took her work life half as seriously as we took her waist measurement, we could use Barbie as a way to talk to girls about the jobs they want, not the bodies they want,” Alter wrote. It’s what our world has become – we judge books by their covers. I think we need to spend a little more time digging deeper and recognizing how much lies beneath the surface – it is what most often surprises us.
And I believe that is where my favorite campaign got it roots. “Imagine the Possibilities” shows a world in which little girls can aspire to be anything they want to be, and they demonstrate that by making a six year old the grown-up in the scenario. It’s astonishing, really, how much more imaginative and happy our world is when we put the youngest generation on the frontlines. And that very generation can grow up today knowing that it is okay, no MORE than okay, to be petite, tall or curvy. Brown hair or blonde hair, wearing flats or heels, it is all just little parts that make up who we are. And being who YOU are is simply fabulous.